Making low cost carriers profitable
Some low-cost airlines have now decided to levy service charges for booking tickets on the net. Low cost carriers have been getting innovative about making money in the last one or two years. Some airlines in the west have worked towards charging the passengers for second check-in baggage, and some are letting you reserve a seat for an extra fee. Now all the domestic airlines have learned to sell tickets for Rs.100 and then add some Rs.2400 in taxes on that; impressive indeed. Unfortunately, competition is high and the costs are also going up, which means these airlines are struggling even with all these new fees. In comes the genius, yours truly, to help these airlines identify more options to make passengers to pay up.
1. Lock the toilets. If anyone wants to use the loo, make them pay at least a $100 to let them in. They have no choice but to give in. Another option was to remove the loo and put some seats there, but it would be needed for emergencies.
2. Ask pregnant women to buy two tickets.
3. Disable the reclining backrests. If you need to push it back, pay up. Capable airlines can go one step ahead and program the backrests. The more you pay, the more it reclines. Pay a dollar to recline it by one degree, $10 to recline it by ten degrees and so on. If you hate the guy in the row behind you, you can make his life miserable by paying $90. If any one complains, give them a toothy air-hostess smile, absolutely free of cost as a goodwill measure and promotional. They can even attach a credit card reading machine to the seats.
4. Make the passengers carry their check-in baggage to the aircraft and load it into the luggage compartment. That saves the expenses of a few employees. Same goes with unloading.
5. This is for Air Deccans of the world who don’t provide a seat number, and make people run to catch a seat. If the aircraft windows could be slid open, they would have probably permitted towel reservations. I wonder why they can’t allot seat numbers to passengers, at least on humanitarian grounds. If that requires investing a few thousand dollars on software, they could do it manually. Neighbourhood private bus operator does it for us by keeping a printed layout sheet and marking manually on them, but the airlines must be too sophisticated for that. Okay, coming back to how they can make money, they can allot a seat for those who pay. And they can also provide right to board first for some more money(Just searched on the internet, some European airlines are already doing this!)
6. Food and water have been commercialized already. The next thing humans need for surviving is air. Aircrafts require compressed air supply. Just stop the supply at midair and ask for money from everyone.
7. Sell bus tickets for the buses that carry passengers from aircraft to terminal and vice versa. Don’t forget to charge extra for luggage.
Safety standards require that every passenger be given a seat. How sad is that? Without the regulations, they could have sold standing seats, with seats costing extra. I can assure that it works. Someone tried an April Fool joke about selling standing room, and they had lot of people falling in line!
Do you have any ideas for the budget airlines that are loosing money?